ACM Interview: Tomlinson Holman

[photo via audioengineeringsociety]

Winner of the 2001 Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement, Mr. Tomlinson Holman is Professor of Film Sound at the USC School of Cinema-Television and a Principal Investigator in the Integrated Media Systems Center at the university.
Tom was chief electrical engineer at Advent Corporation, founded Apt Corporation, maker of the Apt/Holman preamplifier, and was at Lucasfilm for 15 years where he developed the THX Sound System and its companions the Theater Alignment Program, Home THX, and the THX Digital Mastering program.
He is founding editor of Surround Professional magazine, and author of the books Sound for Film and Television and 5.1 Surround Sound Up and Running. He is an honorary member of the Cinema Audio Society and the Motion Picture Sound Editors. He is a fellow of the Audio Engineering Society, the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He is a member of the Acoustical Society of America and the IEEE. He has lifetime or career achievement awards from the CAS and the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association. Tom holds 7 U.S. and corresponding foreign patents totaling 23, and they have been licensed to over 45 companies.

Supplemental videos (.mov):

Does THX stand for Tom Holman Experiments?

Can you tell us the history of THX and how you came up with the idea?

How do you see the future of digital television and digital cinema?

How do you see the future of multichannel music?

What do you think about "Wave field Synthesis" and other researches in audio technology?

What is the next generation 10.2 channel sound system that you're working on?

[via Association for Computing Machinery]
[visit tmhlabs.com]

VIEW Conference 2008

VIEW Conference [11-14 Nov] is the premiere international event in Italy on Computer Graphics, Interactive Techniques, Digital Cinema, 3D Animation, Gaming and VFX (Turin, Italy).

This year, Michael Rubin connects the dots from independent cinema to the Lucasfilm Computer Division, and the creation of not only Pixar, but modern editing, sound, animation, effects and games.
Rubin is the author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution (2006).

Abstract

Animation, computer graphics and videogame creation all had common history from the rise of independent cinema in the ‘70s, in particular, with the dreams and passions of filmmakers George Lucas and Francis Coppola. What was it about these men and their earliest work that led to the universe of entertainment technology we see everyday? The events at Lucasfilm, an exceptionally private company, are not widely understood, but their implications are widespread. The Lucasfilm Computer Division laid the foundation for—and led directly to--the birth of Pixar. How? And why? Rubin will connect the dots from diverse fields of entertainment—editing, sound, animation, effects, games—and show what might be called the “singularity” of these at the Lucasfilm Computer Division in the early 1980s and the most important legacy of Lucas today.

Paul Topolos: a year in the life of WALL-E.

It was a busy year to get everything done on WALL•E. There were concept designs, matte paintings, color scripts, and animation fixes to be finished under a very tight deadline. Through images, interviews, and stories the creative journey of one artist's year on WALL• will be shared.

Paul Topolos joined Pixar Animation Studios in 2002 as a matte painter on The Incredibles. He then worked on Cars before his work on the upcoming Disney-Pixar’s Ratatouille. Paul is responsible for creating many of the Paris cityscapes and backgrounds that appears in the film. Prior to Pixar, Paul worked at the Lucas companies in both the game and film divisions. For LucasArts, he drew storyboards, concept designs and built, painted, art directed and lit 3D sets for video games. At Lucasfilm, Paul was a storyboard artist on Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and the matte painter in the pre-visualization department on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. His last work is the Pixar film Wall-E.

[viewconference.it]

Wall-E meets headphones

[via traileraddict.com]

WALL-E's widget

First Look: “The Complete Making of Indiana Jones”

[via libraryjournal.com]

Gary Rydstrom's first feature film

The Walt Disney Studios unveiled a diverse and ambitious slate of 10 new animated feature films from Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios to be released through the year 2012.


In the summer of 2011, Pixar’s “newt” marks the directing debut of multiple Oscar® winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom.

NEWT (Disney Digital 3-D™)
Pixar Animation Studios
Director: Gary Rydstrom
Producer: Richard Hollander
Writers: Gary Rydstrom, Leslie Caveny

What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other? That's the problem facing Newt and Brooke, heroes of ”newt,” the Pixar film by seven-time Academy Award® winner for sound Gary Rydstrom, and director of Pixar's Oscar nominated short, "Lifted." Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science.

[more photos]

The target consumers are (not ) audiophiles (?)

"...over the last decade the ranks of true audiophiles have been thinning, in large part because of the growing popularity of MP3 players and iPods. These nifty devices enable you to store thousands of hours of your favorite music and take it with you as you bop through your day. You can listen while shopping, while jogging or even, depending on your job, while at work. No one, not even devoted users of MP3s or iPods, claims that the sound reproduction on these technological marvels is equal to that of the best home CD systems. After all, they work by eliminating some of the digitized sound bits to open up storage space for multiple compressed files of music, rendering the sound a little thinner. Still, for consumers, easy access has trumped high fidelity".

[via nytimes.com]

The coolest droid since R2

[Wall-E]

[via slashfilm.com]

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

71%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
[take your test via justsayhi.com]
[thanks to MG Blog for the highlight]

DolBee Digital

[via filmsounddaily.blogspot.com]

Young Indiana Jones Comes to DVD

The Emmy®-award winning series The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones makes its long-awaited DVD debut on Oct. 23 with an unprecedented array of all-new bonus materials, which allow viewers to dig deeper into the real-life events behind young Indy's globe-trotting coming-of-age.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Volume One is the first of three collections of the series and is released by Lucasfilm Ltd., CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment. The first 12-disc set includes seven feature-length episodes as well as 38 in-depth companion documentaries, an historical overview, an interactive game and an interactive timeline.

[read more - starwars.com]

Matthew Wood to create the voice of General Grievous

After the completion of 'There Will Be Blood' as supervising sound editor, Matthew Wood, voice of General Grievous, kept himself busy in Mexico City for "Expo Coleccionistas 2" from 3rd to 5th August at Mexico City's World Trade Center.

[photos via endorsystem.com]

Matthew held a conference speaking about The Clone Wars animated series, showing Star Wars fans around the world how he used Waves UltraPitch to create the villain’s ominous voice. Please note his three-tracks Pro Tools LE session with a Q10 paragraphic EQ, followed by a Digidesign Sci-Fi (analog synth-type ring modulation, frequency modulation, and variable frequency resonators).

Movie notes

Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series, the character was voiced by John Di Maggio (Chapter 20) and Richard McGonagle (Chapters 21-25); for Revenge of the Sith, the Revenge of the Sith video game, and Star Wars: Battlefront II, he was voiced by Matthew Wood. With Matthew Wood's portrayal, Grievous has a stereotypical heavy Russian accent. The character was initially going to be voiced in Revenge of the Sith by actor Gary Oldman; however, he later learned that he was unable to do so, as the movie was being made outside of the Screen Actors Guild, of which he is a member. The audio effects for the coughing were taken from director George Lucas, who had bronchitis during principal photography.

[starwars.wikia.com]

The official Star Wars website released for Halloween of 2005, a Halloween-themed audiocast featuring Star Wars sound effects along with new dialogue specifically recorded for the file by Matthew Wood. Initially, it was available only to Hyperspace members, but beginning October 2006, it was made available for download to all readers of the site. Slip on your headphones and listen to this 18-minute audio file to enter Ben Burtt's magic soundscape.

[read more: Waves Artists | Matthew Wood]

Related posts:

[Ben Burtt reveals some of the Episode III's sound secrets]

[a video-interview with Matthew Wood]

Indiana Jones Cast Comic Con 2007

[via samstuffs]

Indiana Jones Arrives

Hat? Check. Jacket? Check. Bullwhip? Check. As cameras roll on the new Indiana Jones adventure, Director Steven Spielberg shares with us a brief video of Harrison Ford returning to his classic role.

[play video - via indianajones.com]
[first day of shooting]

Ford: Built Tough

A well-sounding and funny Ford truck commercial!

Trailer: The 3D Clone Wars TV series

[via LordDarthTemoc]

Must See Surprise At Starwars.com

Make sure to check out Starwars.com on Sunday, May 27th at 11:30 am (Pacific) for a "MUST SEE SURPRISE".

[via TheForce.Net]

George Lucas on Conan O'Brien

George Lucas as guest at Late Night with Conan O'Brien in San Francisco.

[Watch now Conan visiting Lucasfilm - via nbc.com]
[Here's some behind-the-scenes clips of visit - via starwars.com]

Kungliga Filharmoniska Orkestern

[via random-good-stuff.com]

RATATOUILLE: sound fun guaranteed!

"We have enormous latitude in an animated film to create this sonic world from zero. And we have a whole palette of sounds we can use to create a mood. We can make it seem sinister, or light."

by Randy Thom, director of Sound Design @ Skywalker Sound.

Yahoo.com provided an exclusive behind-the-scenes:



Rough Animation Test: Emile's Magic Trick:



[official trailer]